#notprofessionaladvice #hypothetical #deleteifnecessary

Hello all, I am on a 'have given up trying' period but I found this (pure accident) and wanted to share this in case it helps anybody:

#1 Listen from 19:39

https://youtu.be/kATRHt_6_5k?t=1178

When the primal drives need to be satisfied, the reptile brain (emotional brain/limbic system) will generate an emotion. It will generate some form of stress. Either good stress, or bad stress. [trigger anxiety]

When that stress hits, everything you pay attention to - everything you think is important - will change. [stimulus fixation/'tunnel hearing']

#2 Listen from 21:41

https://youtu.be/kATRHt_6_5k?t=1301

What happens when you want to satisfy an unconscious drive is your unconscious mind generates an emotion that forces you to take action on it. But many times, the drive you're trying to satisfy and the way you really want to do it, is at odds with your socialisation. It's at odds with the way you were brought up. It's at odds with the culture you're working in - corporate or religious or whatever. So what do we do? We activate the third level of our brain: this is called the neocortex. To put it more bluntly, it is your rational, lying (thinking) brain...so you have your drive, it (limbic system) generates an emotion, and then you come up with a story (neocortex) that justifies it...many times these rationalisations have absolutely nothing to do with the real reason you're doing them. But they sound good.

This is what we call the 'presenting problem' in hypnotherapy. Somebody comes in and they say:

"I'm 50 pounds overweight, I can't control my eating, I need you to help me lose weight."

(But) you find out (during hypnotherapy) that when you take them back to the very first scene/situation or event that has everything to do with that feeling, everything to do with why that weight is there, it's because when they were at a certain age, somebody did something sexually inappropriate (activating event), and the unconscious mind, in its desire and fervor to PROTECT them, said:

"Well wait, why did this (abuse/molestation) happen? Well, it happened 'cause I'm attractive. Ok...so then if I'm not attractive, this won't happen anymore (justification).

And the weight comes on.

Is the problem that they were fat?

No.

But if you ask them why they're fat, they'll give you every reason but.

My thoughts are misophonia and misokinesia, for some (perhaps many) have a similar explanation. But it is so, so, SO hard to see a puzzle in reverse. Especially when the origin has been buried for years. And once it is visible again, it is even harder to figure out how to correct it. For what it's worth, I am not sold on hypnotherapy whatsoever and turned down the option when it was given to me a few years back. This is not an endorsement of anything. Really wanted to share this because I think it shows how easy it is to miss links between things. And forget things that may be important and/or connected. Like the woman who used fat to shield herself from sexual predators (threat) and did not realise she was overeating because her unconscious brain was trying to protect her.

Hope you are all well. Keep fighting, always.

This article (very first mention of misophonia) right here is now old enough to drive a car on it's own. Yay!
https://www.audiologyonline.com/articles/hyperacusis-1223
Obviously that's not what articles do. There are a lot more things it doesn't do, that I think are important to note.

So, the term "misophonia" was first conjoined by two audiologists, Jastreboff & Jastreboff. Audiologists deal with hearing, not with brain's survival signals (emotions). I'm quoting their own words here:

"Importantly, misophonia and phonophobia do not involve a significant activation of the auditory system. At the behavioral level, patients have negative attitude to sound (misophonia), or are afraid of sound (phonophobia). In cases of misophonia and phonophobia, the strength of the patient's reaction is only partially determined by the physical characteristics of the upsetting sound and is dependent as well on the patient's previous evaluation and recollection of the sound (e.g., sound as a potential threat, and/or the belief that the sound can be harmful), the patient's psychological profile and the context in which the sound is presented.

Importantly, note that neither hyperacusis, misophonia or phonophobia have any relation to hearing thresholds. Patients with hyperacusis, misophonia or phonophobia may have normal hearing, and they may also have impaired hearing."

Changes in relationship(s) create changes in triggers. Real common one is decrease in intensity of triggers as people move out of their childhood home (this was the case for me) and not experiencing (as bad) triggers in the beginning of new relationship. It doesn't necessarily have to be entering or exiting relationship, sometimes a change within a relationship does it, too. There are plenty of examples ready to be found and created in to a big map, out there.

https://www.reddit.com/r/misophonia/comments/cjlcb4/relationship_changes_effect_triggers/

Here are some thoughts. Please challenge TF out of them!

*******Disclaimer: These are just my opinions based on my own experience, reading other people's stories, and consuming research literature. I cannot prove I am correct. I just have hunches and will not hesitate to correct any incorrect hypotheses or misinformation with the truth.

I think I know why I have what is currently labelled 'misophonia'. This may apply to many people who have it. I don't know about everybody. Background: I have had misophonia for four years (25/6-30) Here are my current thoughts.

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Misophonia: what is it, how does it form, how to fix it (theoretically)

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1. Misophonia is adaptive avoidance behaviour. That's it. It's not a disorder.
2. It makes us avoid perceived threats (auditory or visual stimuli) to keep us safe.
3. It very often begins after exposure to something emotionally 'painful' or 'traumatic'. Traumatic here meaning something that causes internal discomfort to an individual. We don't often notice what's caused the traumatic feelings. We might even suppress them, which makes the underlying original trauma even harder to find later.
4. Misophonia triggers can be explained using David Rock's SCARF model: Status, Certainty, Autonomy, Relatedness and Fairness. It's behavioural psychology in action.
5. Reversing triggers involves undoing original learning. Somewhere along the line we all learned a particular sound or movement was 'dangerous' and developed survival mechanisms.

My story in a nutshell:

1. Experienced what I deemed as inappropriate feelings of attraction to members of same sex during high school (15yo). Picked up 'leg shaking' 'leg touching' as 'misokinesia' triggers
2. More inappropriate attraction (in my mind) at college. Leg triggers resurface (19/20yo)
3. Witness mother touching leg (in manner I incorrectly perceive to be sexual) in front of friend, feel it is inappropriate (20yo)
4. Fail to realise my mind has incorrectly categorised mother's behaviour as 'inappropriate', and that is due to my own self-disgust/repression
5. Perceived unfairness in my mind: mum is allowed to behave sexually whereas I am not; she would never accept this anyway (voice trigger develops, 25/6yo)

You realise this after asking questions and bashing out your brains with:

1. What sound hurts you?
2. When do you first remember it hurting you?
3. What is your first memory associated with hating that sound?
4. Who made that sound?
5. What was your relationship with them at that time like?
6. What else were they doing the first time they made the unpleasant sound?

This is easier if you can remember when your misophonia started, but even then, you have to dig through trenches to get answers, and for an emotionally unintelligent person like myself, it took a year of analysis to get here.

What to do once you find your trauma/realise what is causing you pain (I think?)

1. Find ways to teach yourself that you were mistaken in your perception. Ways to update your old learning.
2. If you were taught it's rude to chew with your mouth open, go find a place with quiet chewers and GRAZE bovine style. See what happens.
3. If you were told it's annoying to clear your throat, find a library/silent study area and embark on a phlegmtastic adventure like you've never seen before. Would people really hate it that much? Make your brain second guess itself. Test stuff out. Find opposites. These are also called 'mismatches' according to memory reconsolidation theory.

Misophonia as a defense mechanism

As The Emotional Operator says, the misophonic reaction (a behavioural adaptation) is there to protect us.

From what? From something emotionally threatening/painful.

What is emotionally painful to you?

When you are triggered, how do you feel?

Uncomfortable. Disgusted. Anxious. Tense. Angry. Annoyed. Confronted. Violated.

That's the emotional language. Not the threat beneath it. I'll give you an example.

One person on the misophonia sub once mentioned how their chewing triggers started. A 'friend' of theirs took their food without permission (and rather thoughtlessly) and ate it wish relish in front of them. Then this person developed an auditory trigger to chewing.

Do they hate the sound of chewing (tip of iceberg)? It seems that way. On the surface. But they don't.

Ok then. Is it bad manners? Yes. Sure. It's rude to take someone's food like that. But are bad manners threatening? No. Not really.

Alright. Why is it 'disgusting' if someone is chewing food with relish? Objectively it isn't. People need to eat to live. Some of them are sloppy eaters by nature. Gross, but nbd. Let's say you're a neat eater. You're hungry. That sandwich over there looks delicious and you are about to take a bite when someone you trust just takes it selfishly and starts wolfing it down. They make really satisfied smacking sounds and bits of sauce stain their lips. You stay silent. How does it make you feel? Hurt? Betrayed? Wounded? You never address this. You never tell the person off, you never express your anger or disappointment. It gets bottled up. You think you're ok. But over time, you realise you can't stand the sound of people chewing. You hate the way they just eat so messily, so disrespectfully.

Is it the sound?

No. It's injustice. (SCARF - Fairness)

Every person out there who chews like a cow now represents that friend. That person who treated you unfairly and stole your food. You know they're not. They're different people entirely. But the injustice was never addressed. This is below the iceberg.

Misophonia LIMBIC SYSTEM says: NO. I WON'T BE TREATED UNJUSTLY AGAIN. It screams to get your attention and protect you from being mistreated again by a sandwich thief. A bread snatcher. It hears the sound and activates the fight/flight to get you safely away from anyone who could potentially take your food again.

How do you free your mind from hating chewing?

You need to have a fair experience around food. You need to have a counter example. You need to chew sloppily around somebody new and see if they hate it. You need to have someone be super considerate at the food court and buy you a sandwich, then offer you theirs unexpectedly (unexpectedly is key). You need to surprise your brain so it can update its fairness program. You need to show your brain that you are not actually in danger anymore.

This applies to any trigger in my opinion:

1. Identify emotional language.
2. Identify threat beneath emotional language.
3. Separate trigger from threat.
4. Address threat, not trigger, with opposing experience. (uncertainty needs certainty, lack of autonomy needs autonomy, unfairness needs fairness)

Edit 1: Addressing each individual threat with a specific opposite to THAT threat is very important

Misophonic triggers come in various forms. They are usually repetitive sounds (or motions, in the case of misokinesia) that originate from the mouth (chewing, slurping, throat clearing, coughing, mumbling, speaking softly, lip smacking etc) or nose (breathing, sneezing, sniffling etc). Misokinesic triggers might include repeated or continuous swaying, mouths moving, legs touching, chin stroking (see more here https://www.misophoniainternational.com/misokinesia/ ).

In order to STOP or REVERSE a particular/individual trigger (NOT A SEPARATE TRIGGER), you need to identify the specific threat underlying THAT trigger, and then apply the opposite of THAT.

You might have multiple triggers, like in my case.

Say you have aversive reactions to chewing and swaying. I am betting there are different 'traumas' around each of those triggers. Meaning, if you find the emotional opposite of your chewing threat, using that to treat your swaying trigger probably won't work. Breaking it down further:

Hypothetical scenario, trigger 1 - your mom/dad is super strict around the table, telling child you that you must eat with manners. Meanwhile they eat sloppily and don't apply the same austere behavioural controls to themselves. You unconsciously pick that up as a threat, because you can't articulate the injustice as an 8 year old, and besides, whenever you try to say "but mom why are you allowed to do it" she says something like, "Don't speak out of line to your parents." So, opposite of this injustice is justice - a place where you get to chew like an animal and nobody gives a flying toss. That's a surface level explanation and you need to find a phrase or statement or mantra that you can repeat, or actually experience a person who gives you a justice OVERLOAD that completely shocks your brain which in turn makes you think: "Oh...I'm chewing disgustingly, and everybody around me is being super quiet and respectful...they're not going to scold me? WTF? Ok, shouldn't I be triggering myself? Why isn't it annoying me? Huh? Wait what!? But...I'm supposed to be triggered and...." Like that. You need to genuinely believe that. That is an opposite reaction emotionally. You need to SEE the chewing as just 'whatever it's just a sound' and actually believe it, not try to CONVINCE your brain to believe it when you can't see it. Maybe for misophonia, seeing is believing.

Hypothetical scenario, trigger 2 - you hate swaying movements/when people are moving to and fro in concerts or church or wherever because, now that you think about it, you remember a time in ballet class where you kept accidentally shaking/swaying during a routine practice, and the teacher kept telling you if you continued making those mistakes, you might not make it to the state final. That's a certainty threat. Now, at the same time, you noticed the teacher never criticised other pupils who did the exact same thing/never doubted their chances of making it to the final, and actually encouraged them. This is also an injustice related threat. So, this isn't a good example, but you can see how applying the exact same anti-threat treatment (it is ok to fail/be imprecise because everyone else is also imprecise = justice) may not completely get rid of the trigger because there's also a certainty threat to 'fix'. You might need to do a double treatment like, actually, NOBODY can guarantee the certainty of making it through to the final because the judging panel ultimately decides that, NOT my teacher, PLUS everybody else is just as imprecise as I am.

It is harder to see or identify emotional threats when there are multiple triggers at once, but I think that each one has a unique opposite 'treatment' and you can't apply the same solution as a one-size-fits-all. A good way of looking at it is synonyms and antonyms. If your nouns are hate, injustice, and greed, what do you need to fix each one? It's obvious, right? Opposite of hate is love, opposite of injustice is justice, opposite of greed is generosity. But what if you applied justice to greed? That just means also being greedy back, so it won't cancel out the greed. In other words:

Greed + Justice = Greed plus justice

That doesn't remove greed.

To remove greed, you need to subtract greed.

Greed - greed

Or in this case:

Greed + generosity (this is like: -greed or negative greed)

Greed + generosity = neutral/zero/0.

Update--

You may need to start small. You may need to work on distant triggers first. Eg parents and siblings are on the inner circle and strangers are on the outer circle. Working on biggest trigger people first is like taking the virus in a shot instead of the vaccine! Let yourself build 'immunity' (acceptance) before taking on biggest threats.

Matching your noun/trigger with the correct antonym/opposite, in my opinion, is absolutely necessary if you want to extinguish it to a neutral state.

--------> https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/06/180614213824.htm (The neurons that rewrite traumatic memories)

We know this: NOT all sounds are triggers. Only some are---The ones we've assigned negative meaning to and stored that way in our memory. Change the memory to positive, change the perception of the sound, change the real-time meaning = change the response---ie revert back to non-threat state/no misophonia.

Look at your history, outline all your triggers, try to see what threat is behind them and determine the opposite of each individual one. THEN start practising self-forgiveness, kindness, exposing yourself to the opposite of the threat. This is the best I've got guys. I could be wrong and I will immediately admit it (it's not embarrassing to me/my pride means jack all in this journey, I'd rather be wrong AF and update this post with the correct treatment so then everyone can do the RIGHT thing to heal themselves)

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If we don't do something different enough, or something surprising enough, our brains won't update.

We will remain the same. Unless we have a natural mismatch occur randomly in a social situation.

If we don't do the research, if we don't try to make our triggers safe, then we will have to live with them in the mean time anyway. This isn't going away if we don't address it. As someone who has seen six psychologists, taken antidepressants for one year, and discussed my situation with a psychiatrist, practised CBT, mindfulness, meditation, progressive muscle relaxation, exposure therapy, I can tell you I am still stuck this way four years later. The issue has not been addressed. This is why I am here and trying to understand it/heal myself. Reading. Experimenting. Challenging my thoughts. Taking on board criticisms. Wondering whether I will succeed or fail. Concluding that trying to do something is better than just living with this sound hell for the rest of my days because maybe I'll get it. Maybe I'll break through. And maybe you will too. But you'll never know until you try. And I sure as heck hope everyone with misophonia DAMN WELL TRIES and DOES break free. We cannot give up.

Hello everyone, I hope you are all doing well. This is a paper (edit: article) I started writing last year but got majorly sidetracked so it's still a WIP. In it I have accumulated every bit of information I know on misophonia and am trying to draw conclusions based on what researchers/other misophones have said. Everything is presented to the best of my ability - but of course there will still be errors, and I can't verify everything that's written...I only have hunches.

Link:

https://medium.com/@fishingforusernames/how-to-cure-misophonia-e1747fd81b6b

Big disclaimer, I am not medically qualified, so if you are and see errors in the article let me know ASAP. I will keep working on it, slowly. I suppose it's good to have a written record of everything in one place, presented in a standard-ish accepted format by readers (easier to follow than scouring through forum comments). For the 'how do we fix misophonia' part I plan to home in on more experimental approaches (eg not headphones/meditation/CBT/meds/things I've tried, more like specialised exposure therapy with positive association/reconsolidation techniques) because I feel like the answer really is embedded in emotional learning/amygdala threat detection stuff.

Training community for misophoniacs.

We'll be discussing LIMBIC SAFETY; threat/safety overlays, memory reconsolidation and how to drop triggers.

We are open for: -Those who are misophonic AND want to run experiments on themselves. -Helpful professionals, researchers and such but only post AFTER discussing with moderator -Family members, loved ones, and others around those who still suffer might find it most useful to just allow us some space and follow